Birthday

After a sold out run of award-winning playwright Crystal Skillman’s Nobody at Seventh Street Small Stage in February, Caffe Cino Fellowship winning company Rising Phoenix Rep and director Daniel Talbott will team up with Skillman again to present her new site-specific play Birthday in the extremely intimate back room of downtown restaurant Jimmy’s No. 43. RPR Artistic Associates Denis Butkus (Othello at Theatre for a New Audience, Coast of Utopia) and Julie Kline (Sometimes After Dinner at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Fall Forward in Sitelines/River to River) will appear in roles written specifically for them, having previously appeared together in the same space in Skillman’s The Ride and Napoleon Ellsworth’s Don’t Pet the Zookeeper.

In Birthday, an anxious young woman slips away from a unwelcoming birthday party in a bar only to discover a stranger sitting in the other room. Confiding old secrets and past mistakes as the party rages nearby, they find they may have a chance to forgive themselves and each other.